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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 480469" data-attributes="member: 41">Planting 28, CY 59336:  Flying High Into the Night.Thrommel is swiftly returned from the dead, via Tritherion’s grace, and abashedly promises that he will Try Not to Die in the future.  Jespo speaks with the Prince at length, trying to impress on the young fighter the Grave Responsibility of his Important Station.  Fräs chimes in with well-placed purrs and hisses.While Thrommel is receiving his lecture, the rest of the group searches the chambers nearest the well, and discover that the Lamia was (as suspected) an agent of Iuz, and had a special charge amongst these giants.  A handwritten note from a being identified as “Festering” charges the Lamia with “converting and transforming all giant supplicants, willing or no” and “harvesting any dissenters”.  The group concludes that “harvesting” is a metaphor for gathering body parts, as the grisly butchery C’min and Elijah witnessed seems to indicate.  The note further instructs the Lamia to deliver any “harvested” giants to an excavation site, and bring them “before the Bleeding Stone”.  The note gives directions for a caravan to follow a trail further North and East, into the heart of Tenh’s Northern mountain range.The party searches the remainder of the hill giant’s fortress thoroughly, and then loads the valuables into one of the giant’s carts.  Of particular note, the Iuzian orcs were all in possession of potions of healing—the majority of which went mostly unused thanks to the Liberator’s swift assault. Using the giant’s beasts of burden, the party travels with the treasure back to the mines of Cur’ruth where Jespo and C’min begin the process of cataloguing and identifying the loot.Elijah disappears into the wild of Tenh for several days, returning with a trio of massive dire wolves in tow.  She introduces the animals to the mines of Cur’ruth, and explains that she and the wolves have “reached an understanding”.  Apparently, that understanding includes terrifying the former Provost Marshall Reine, who refuses to go near the creatures, much to Jespo’s delight.  The Cur’ruth Tenha prove more open to the presence of the animals, and the Aital explains that dire wolves are revered by the Tenha as divine emissaries—in Tenha legend, ancestor spirits often appear to lost travelers in the form of a wolf to lead them to safety.Heydricus, for his part, humors Elijah, and extracts a promise from her that her wolves will not maul any of his followers.  Thus assured, he returns to his task of shaping his forces into some kind of fighting shape.Meanwhile, Elenthal rides into the mountains on the back of one of his trained griffons, and following the directions indicated in the Lamia’s note, discovers a crevasse high up on one of the frozen mountain peaks.  The crevasse is obviously occupied, as several plumes of smoke rise skyward, dissipating in the thin mountain air.The cart trail does not reach the peak, however, ending several hundred feet beneath the crevasse.  Where the trail ends, a huge one-room structure stands, bordered on one side by the mountain face.  The building is manned by a lone blue-skinned giant who tends to a pair of massive giant eagles.  Each eagle is some fifty feet in length, and they are both tethered to the building with long chains.  The eagles are outfitted to carry either riders or cargo, with gigantic saddles lying nearby.When Elenthal returns with his report, the Liberators form a plan.  Elenthal will return to the site and scout a suitable hiding place along the cart-trail, from which the group can stage a raid on the eagle’s aerie.  In three days time Jespo is to scry Elenthal, and reduce then teleport the remainder of the group to his side.This process is accomplished without a hitch, and once the heroes are returned to their normal size, C’min, and Elijah move toward the aerie, while Elenthal flies overhead on his griffon.  Jespo huddles with Dabus and Thrommel, explaining that as soon as he is brought near enough, he will take over the body of the giant, and ferry the entire group up to the crater on the back of one of the eagles.C’min scouts up the left flank overlooking the aerie, while Elijah approaches from the right, across the face of the building.  Elijah creeps forward as quietly as a mouse, but the eagle tethered out front spies her immediately, then spreads its wings and pounces on the surprised ranger!The eagle clutches Elijah with its claws, piercing her flesh, but lets her fall into the snow as it reaches the end of its tether with a sudden jolt.  Elijah grunts once as she lands in the snow, trying to clear her head and suppress the pain from her wounds.  The eagle hovers there, casting its massive head to the side, searching for its snack.  Elijah buries herself in the snow in an attempt to hide from the gigantic bird of prey.“Crim!” Thrommel shouts anxiously, disturbing Jespo’s cackling recitation.  “My mount!”  The chain tethering the hovering eagle goes slack, as it is released from the inside.  Freed from its restraints, the giant eagle flaps its wings once, then twice, and takes to the sky, leaving a swirling cloud of snow and ice shards behind.  Jespo casts mass haste, preparing his group for battle, and then summons a phantom steed directly underneath Thrommel, who closes the visor on his helm, and levels his lance, readying himself for his charge toward the aerie.Within her makeshift igloo, Elijah drinks a potion of healing, and emerges from the snow.  But her predicament only deepens as a second eagle emerges from the aerie, with the blue-skinned giant on its back.  The giant is a fierce-looking creature, covered head and shoulders with ice-encrusted hair, its pale-blue eyes beaming forth from its bearded face with a light of their own.  The giant guides his eagle with reins that it keeps in one hand while brandishing a wickedly barbed spear in the other.  A large axe dangles from a harness at its back, its razor edge catching reflected light from the snow.As the eagle emerges, it spots Elijah crawling away from her hiding place, and begins to beat its massive wings, creating a blizzard underneath itself as it hovers over Elijah.  Elenthal nudges his griffon into a dive, and charges the giant with his sword whistling through the thin, frozen air.  Unfortunately, the cloud of icy shards and snow completely obscures his sight, and as Elenthal charges into the thick of it, he passes through without finding his target.  Elenthal’s griffon pulls up from its steep dive and climbs as swiftly as it can, but to Elenthal’s horror, the eagle – slow at first – begins to gain on him.Thrommel charges forward on his phantom steed and arrives at the aerie just seconds after the eagle leaves it.  The prince curses into his helmet at the cowardice of some monsters, then fires a pair of bowshots at his fleeing foe.Dabus levels his wand of searing light, and sends a pair of beams streaking toward the giant on the back of the eagle.  As he does so, the eagle catches up with Elenthal’s griffon, and lashes out viciously with its claws, but Elenthal manages to coax his griffon to dip just underneath the eagle’s razor sharp talons.  The giant eagle bends over double to snap at the griffon beneath it with its beak, and as it turns, the giant on its back is able to bring its axe to bear, striking Elenthal twice, and knocking the ranger from his saddle!Dabus’ wand of searing light does not miss, however, and after another moment, the giant slumps forward, limp and unconscious on the eagle’s back, strapped into his saddle and unable to help himself as he slowly bleeds out, circling the sky aimlessly, his reins clutched tight in his dying grip.Elenthal, for his part, is feather falling to the ground, unconscious and dying.  Dabus marks Elenthal’s limp form as it drifts to the ground like a fall leaf, first sliding to the left, then the right as the cross-winds buffet him.Fortunately, by the time Elenthal reaches the ground, he is stable, and after a trio of curing spells from Dabus, the stoic ranger is back on his feet.The group watches the two eagles, and the rider-less one dives lower, apparently still fixated on Elijah as a potential snack.  The creature dives into a withering rain of missile fire, including a searing light spell from Dabus and an acid arrow from Jespo.  The bird goes from wounded and angry to crippled and terrified within a span of several seconds, and the gargantuan eagle fails in its feeble attempt to check its now out-of-control dive.  The bird smashes into the mountain-side, sending up a huge cloud of snow and debris and leaving an impact crater large enough for a family of halflings to live in on the spot where Elijah was standing just a second before!For the second time, Elijah pulls herself out from under the snow, but this time, she is no longer in fear of her life.“That was something,” she says.“Yes,” Elenthal agrees.  The two rangers regard one another as the rest of the group climbs toward the aerie.------Next:  The Liberators take on the Frost Giant Jarl (no, its not what you think)!</blockquote>

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